Exploring, eating and writing about good food on Canada's west coast

I was bound and determined to try one of my Top Ten Creepy Halloween party Foods to bring to my friends Anna & Jake's annual Monster Mash party. (That's Anna posing with the intestines above, rocking a chicken costume this year)

I decided to go with the 'Stuffed Intestines' made with puff pastry thought up by CanaryGirl.com. She suggests savoury guacamole or empanada meat as the filling for her intestines, which I bet looks absolutely gross and tastes great. I decided to go sweet instead, and make a simple variation of a raspberry danish, in stomach form. Here it is, pre-oven.

Amusingly, this recipe only needs a few ingredients and was so quick to create that I didn't have time to take many pictures, and the oven wasn't even hot yet by the time I had finished prep. Which makes this a great Halloween dessert, lightning fast, uber easy, looks revolting and tastes good. Mine certainly wasn't 'pretty' but it fit right in with the buffet of cake pop brains and chocolate strawberry ghosts.

Jessica, a stunning work of art this year, expresses the appropriate amount of horror on seeing the Intestines join the Halloween party. I love my friends.

Raspberry Danish Puff Pasty Intestines

Ingredients

1 package puff pastry (two rolls), thawed

2 cups cream cheese, room temperature

3 tablespoons raspberry jam

2 tablespoons maple syrup

1 egg, beaten for egg wash

Red & blue food colouring

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and line a baking dish with parchment paper.

Mix cream cheese and maple syrup together until smooth. Put in a piping bag or plastic sandwich bag with a small corner snipped off, set aside.

Unroll one puff pastry and gently stretch into a larger rectangle. Pipe 1 cup of the sweetened cream cheese in a line along the bottom of the pastry, then spoon a line of raspberry jam just above it. Roll the puff pastry up into a long tube (try not to leave air bubbles, can cause explosion of filling out the side). Brush the outer edges with the egg wash to seal the top and sides closed. Repeat with the second roll.

One at a time, gently pull and lengthen a roll, then begin laying it out in the baking dish, twisting and turning it to look like intestines. Repeat with the second roll. As you can see in the picture above, I left room between the coils, which filled in as the pastry puffed up during baking.

Brush the entire dessert lightly with egg wash. Mix red food colouring with a few drops of blue and use a fine-tipped paint brush to paint on decorative 'veins' on the pastry.

Bake for approximately 25-30 minutes until golden brown.

Serve with a steak knife so people can hack themselves off pieces, macabre-style.

Devour like a zombie eating... well... intestines.

Happy Halloween to all. This year I was the Yip Yip martian on the right below, helping my husband Yip in this picture hold down Anna the Chicken for Swedish Chef Nick. We really do love Halloween here on Vancouver Island. Yip yip yip, uh huh, uh huh.